Stargods by Ian Douglas (best summer books TXT) 📕

“Let’s kick it, Demons,” he called. “We can’t let the Yorkies have all the fun!”

Nungiirtok Fleet

Sol System

1723 hours, FST

It took everything he had, but with a supreme act of will, 4236 Xavix began to bring the crippled Ashtongtok Tah back into responsive control using his direct link with the ship’s AI network. Much of that network consisted of living Tokhardwired into the ship’s computer, providing the computing power of a massively parallel array of minds, both living andartificial. Many of those minds, Xavix saw, were empty—dead or worse—but that was of scant importance now. Tok, after all,were there to be used in whatever capacity their Masters demanded, whether that be in life, in death, or in the twilight in-betweenof cyborg circuitry. He was able to use what was left to re-establish control over drives and weapons. With a little moreeffort and the labor of several thousand Tok in the damage-control parties, he restored artificial gravity and secured theship’s inner core against the threat of venting atmosphere into space.

The main gravitic weapon, he noted, was irreparably dead; its maw had been facing the distant human squadron when those cloudsof relativistic pellets had firestormed across the Ashtongtok Tah’s leading hemisphere. The planetoid still had plenty of other, smaller weapons, both gravitic and coherent beam projectors,and should have little problem with the relatively primitive human warships.

The state of the massive vessel’s defensive shields was more worrisome. Based on the ship’s gravitic drive fields, they were still offline, overloaded by the influx of raw energy in the enemy’s attack. Nuclear warheads were getting through now, far too many of them, and the Ashtongtok Tah’s ravaged outer surface was taking a real pounding.

But as he urged his hardwired slaves to greater and yet greater efforts, secondary gravitic projectors were brought back on-lineand powered up, at least in part, and 4236 Xavix again had control of his ship.

“Sensors! Can we see outside yet?”

“Partially, Lord,” a bloodied Nungiirtok at a nearby console reported. “We have no visibility ahead at all. The surface sensorsappear to have been burned out across the entire leading hemisphere. We can see aft, however, at least somewhat.”

“And what do we see there?”

“At least 110 of the human singleships, Lord. The fighters. They are in two groups, one considerably ahead of the other, andwill hit us in two waves. Range . . . the closest wave is eleven thousand gachag distant, inbound on a direct intercept course at three-fourths the speed of light.”

Xavix did a quick calculation and realized that they had little time before the first wave reached them. He had, essentially,two choices. First choice—he could continue on this course and in this attitude and use his remaining weapons to pick offthe enemy fighters as they came within range. Or, on the second tentacle, he could rotate the crippled sphere of rock so thatthe already ravaged leading hemisphere faced astern. They then could ride out an attack which for the most part would strikethe seas of molten lava now covering that side.

The Nungiirtok and the Tok Iad tended to be direct in combat to the point of bullheadedness. There was no reason to outflankan enemy when you could, instead, smash straight through their center and crush them, and Xavix was strongly tempted to pushon as he was already doing, to engage the oncoming enemy fighters and knock them from the sky before they could hit the Ashtongtok Tah again.

And yet . . . the Ashtongtok Tah had been badly used in the last engagement, and with his available resources reduced by well over half, there was merit intactically husbanding what was left.

It was a most un-Tok way to think, an un-Tok way to act in the face of an outside threat, but 4236 Xavix possessed a flexiblemind together with an indomitable will. He would choose the second option.

There should just be time to bring the ship around before the enemy’s first wave reached them.

USNA CVS America

Flag Bridge

Sol System

1724 hours, FST

“Range to target!” Gray snapped.

“Eighty million kilometers, Admiral,” Lieutenant Vasquez, his sensor officer, reported. “Intercept in . . . make it ten minutes,now, sir.”

America had been decelerating in anticipation of a rendezvous pass with the enemy, but the alien asteroids were still approachingat nearly the speed of light. They would flash past the battlegroup so quickly that even AI-guided weapons systems would havetrouble locking on to a target. Vasquez’s estimate depended on the enemy continuing on the same heading, with the same acceleration.

A million variables . . . and a million things that could go wrong.

“Ms. West,” Gray said slowly, “inform all ships in the squadron. They are to continue firing at the targets and not worryabout trying to hit them around the corner.”

“Aye, sir.”

Classic starship tactics called for decelerating down to almost no velocity at all relative to local space just when the targetwas passing. That meant that America and her consorts would continue hammering at those planetoids on their near sides, the hemispheres already reduced to molten lava by the fighter strike.

“Captain Mackey, tell Weps that I’d like to see him put the spinal mount to good purpose. A couple of massive rounds at near-c ought to work wonders.”

“Absolutely, sir!”

America’s spinal mount consisted of a pair of railguns side by side running for much of the star carrier’s length and opening atthe center of her shield cap forward. Often used to launch fighters at high accelerations, the mag-lev mount could also beused to fire multi-ton masses of depleted uranium, lead, or even tightly bundled pods of America’s as-yet-unrecycled garbage; mass, after all, was mass, and the composition didn’t matter a bit. The muzzle velocity wasn’tanywhere near c . . . but the velocity of the oncoming target was. It was their best hope of cracking that mountain like an egg, and reducing mostof it to debris.

“Weapons Officer!” Mackey snapped. “Ready the spinal mount for immediate firing!”

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

“Helm . . . stand by for maneuvering.”

“Aye, sir.”

The heads-up for maneuvering was vital. If America succeeded in breaking up the alien planetoid ship—even if she just knocked loose some debris—that debris would still be flyingtoward